Europe & Central Asia

2013

New York, July 29, 2013--Federal authorities in Ukraine should take
over the investigation into today's brutal attack on a TV journalist who had
regularly reported on allegations of corruption in the regional police force, the
Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Sergei Ostapenko, a reporter for
Irta, suffered a broken jaw and other injuries in the attack outside his
apartment building in Lugansk, eastern Ukraine, according to news reports.

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New
York, July 25, 2013--The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by reports that
numerous Turkish journalists, including the leading columnist Yavuz Baydar, have
been fired or forced to resign from news outlets in apparent retaliation for
their independent coverage of anti-government demonstrations that swept the
country.

Speaking at a U.N. Security Council discussion about the
protection of journalists, Associated Press Executive Editor and CPJ
Vice Chair Kathleen Carroll remembered the 31 AP journalists who have died
reporting the news and whose names grace the Wall of Honor that visitors pass
as they enter the agency's New York headquarters. Most were killed covering war,
from the Battle of the Little Big Horn to Vietnam to Iraq. But around the
world, Carroll
noted, "most journalists who die today are not caught in some
wartime crossfire, they are murdered just because of what they do. And those
murders are rarely ever solved; the killers rarely ever punished."

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At midnight on Monday,
the French news website Mediapart
complied with the Versailles court of appeal which last week ordered the site to withdraw articles referring to the
Bettencourt recordings--the secret tapings of Liliane Bettencourt, the richest
woman in France, by her butler. Mediapart
as well as the newsweekly Le Point had
been sued for violation of privacy by the Bettencourt family and by the L'Oréal
heiress' legal tutor and fund manager, Patrice de Maistre. Le Point withdrew its articles on Friday.

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New
York, July 22, 2013--Two assailants on Sunday severely beat Oleg Bogdanov, a
Ukrainian journalist who has been subjected to an escalating series of attacks
in recent months that have included threats and an arson attack on his car,
according to news reports.

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Much has
been made recently about the digital surveillance of journalists--and rightly
so--but physical surveillance remains a key tactic of security forces, law
enforcement, and private entities. These operatives are monitoring journalists,
gathering intelligence on them, and potentially obstructing journalists' work
or putting them at risk.

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New
York, July 18, 2013--Russian authorities must free on appeal the anti-corruption
blogger and opposition activist Aleksei Navalny, who was
convicted on politicized charges of embezzlement today and sentenced to five
years in prison, the Committee to Protect Journalists said. Navalny was jailed
immediately after the verdict was announced, according to news reports.

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New York, July 17, 2013--As a court prepares to review the
case of Belarusian journalist Irina Khalip on Friday, the Committee to Protect
Journalists calls on local authorities to end their persecution of Khalip and
allow her return to a free life.

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Three years ago, revelations by the
independent news website Mediapart on
the "Bettencourt
affair"-- allegations of illegal funding of former President Nicolas Sarkozy's
conservative UMP party by the heiress of the L'Oréal fortune, Liliane
Bettencourt--put the fledgling site on the map, helped it build a reputation as
a dogged and fearless muckraker, and boosted its subscriber base.